NICK BLACKMAN has vowed to sacrifice personal glory for collective gain if it means firing Sheffield United towards the Championship.

The former Blackburn Rovers marksman, speaking ahead of this afternoon’s League One encounter with Brentford, issued the pledge after being labelled as “unplayable” by teammate and captain Michael Doyle.

Blackman, who has scored 10 times in only 21 appearances since his summer move from Ewood Park, said: “I’ve done okay in terms of goals but my main aim is going up not being leading scorer or anything like that.

“There’s plenty more to come from me, I think, so it’s important to keep working hard.

“I can improve in terms of my consistency and hopefully I’ll do that by playing games.

“Yes, there are teams who can hurt us at this level as we’ve seen but there’s absolutely no doubt that we are capable of hurting them too.

“If you look at our attack then we can definitely score goals.

“I want to achieve my own personal targets because that will help us as a group, but the most important thing is getting this club back to where it belongs.”

Blackman has been deployed out wide in recent weeks but could revert to a more central role at Griffin Park if Shaun Miller fails to recover from injury.

Doyle claimed the 23-year-old is equipped to wreak havoc along the flanks - “Nick’s got great touch and he’s so powerful too” - and Blackman added: “It was a nice compliment from the skipper and I do enjoy being out there.

“I like running at defenders and then getting into the area.

“I don’t see why it should stop me scoring goals and I played quite a lot of football there for Blackburn so it’s not strange at all.

“I still see myself as a striker but, really, all I want to do is contribute to the team in any way I can.”

United travelled to the capital last night second in the table while Uwe Rosler’s side are seventh after losing only one of their previous 15 games in all competitions.